With a little more than 10 weeks before Election Day, you would have to be living in a remote cave not to know that America is in hyper-election season. Yet, I suspect cave dwellers can hear the din of political rhetoric and may suffer the mudslinging even in their remote location. Given the events of the past six weeks, we are certainly in strange political times.
Worst of Times?
We tend to believe that today’s politics is the worst ever. That’s because we are experiencing it and didn’t live in past times. Imagine the Election of 1860, when our nation was being ripped apart and on the cusp of the Civil War.
I recounted visiting Abraham Lincoln’s Presidential Library in one of my columns years ago. There, I was stunned to walk through a short hallway plastered with newspaper editorial cartoons from that era. Most were brutal; some were downright vile. By comparison, most of today’s editorial cartoons seem rather gentile.
Political Pot Stirring
In a more recent column, I focused on the book, “I, Citizen” by Tony Woodlief. He writes about our nation’s polarized political class — media, academia, political parties and government — who have been attacking one another for years and how they have convinced everyday Americans to join the fray. Hardcore political activists from both parties represent probably one-third of voters. They make all the noise, and national media and social media amplify their voices. Meanwhile, most Americans are busy living their lives and just want America to work.
Woodlief believes the real threat to our union isn’t Red vs. Blue America; it is the quiet collusion within our nation’s political class that takes away most Americans’ freedoms — our right to self-governance. He states, “The political class has stolen our birthright and set us at one another’s throats.” He’s right.
Ballot Box Answer
The simple answer is making an informed decision on who will best protect your liberty. That’s done at the ballot box. Regretfully, many Americans don’t exert their God-given authority. Only 63% of eligible Americans are registered to vote, and typically, only about two-thirds of registered voters show up to vote in the last presidential election.
Secure and Simple Elections
I’ve been voting for nearly 60 years, and it’s never been confusing. You go in, you vote for the candidate who best represents your values and the candidate with the most votes at the end wins the election — plain and simple. But there are some who want to muddy the waters when it comes to voting, and if they get their way, voters who continue to cast their ballots in this plain-and-simple way may see their ballots thrown out. It is called ranked-choice voting.
Under a ranked-choice voting system, voters can’t just vote for the candidate they like best if they want to be sure their vote will count. Instead, they must vote for every single candidate on the ballot, ranking them in order of their preference. This confusing, unfair and unethical system typically benefits one political party over another. This sort of system has no place in South Carolina.
Ranked-choice voting is confusing and turns elections into a game with a ballot so long and so convoluted that it looks like a receipt from CVS more than a ballot.
In Minneapolis’s 2013 mayoral race, nearly three dozen candidates appeared on the ballot, with voters facing hundreds of possible ranking permutations. Imagine teaching seasoned citizens how to rank every candidate after decades of voting for one person. On the flip side, your teenager will probably turn to TikTok to figure out how to vote in this convoluted system — a win for China, I’m sure. Ranked-choice voting decreases voter turnout and disenfranchises voters whose ballots are thrown out.
Winners Become Losers
The ballot is not the only thing that is confusing under ranked-choice voting — this method has a habit of turning winners into losers.
Despite receiving the most votes in Maine’s 2018 election — 46% to the Democrat candidate’s 45% — Republican Bruce Poliquin lost his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives under a ranked-choice voting system. Since he did not receive more than 50% of the vote in the first round of tabulation, election officials moved down the rankings, resulting in the tossing out of 8,253 ballots. Not surprisingly, Democrat Jared Golden became the winner. It’s common sense that the candidate who receives the most votes wins, but losers often become winners under ranked-choice voting.
By design, ranked-choice voting elections are unfair and result in many voters’ ballots being thrown in the trash. How do you prevent your ballot from being tossed? By voting for every single candidate, even those you oppose.
Bad Choices
It’s unethical — imagine forcing members of our law enforcement to vote for candidates who call for the defunding of police or making someone who is pro-life vote for a candidate who wants to give more money to Planned Parenthood. And if they don’t comply with the complex voting rules, their ballots may be thrown in the trash.
During Alaska’s 2022 special election, 60% of Alaskans chose a Republican to take the state’s at-large congressional seat, but after all the ranked tabulation was done, a Democrat was declared the winner. More than 11,000 ballots were tossed because the voters needed to rank all the candidates.
This terrible voting method also delays election results and mandates the central counting of ballots. A New York City mayoral primary took a shocking 15 days to be decided after officials went through eight rounds of tabulation and threw out more than 140,000 ballots.
Imagine trying to audit a ranked-choice voting system like this. Not only do the initial results take a long time to come in but verifying them down the road also makes the process even longer. A California county school board election was overturned two months after it had been decided when a third-party organization’s audit showed that the initial third-place winner was the victor.
South Carolina Push
It’s no coincidence that ranked-choice voting is being pushed in South Carolina and nationwide.
After the 2020 elections, many states, South Carolina included, took action to ensure our elections are secure. Even before the 2020 presidential election, South Carolina’s legislature passed reforms making it easy to vote but hard to cheat.
Some organizations and donors see ranked-choice voting as a workaround to the safeguards we’ve put up around our elections — a way for them to win without having to earn the most votes. That’s why I’ve sponsored legislation in the South Carolina House of Representatives to ban ranked-choice voting in our state. Similar legislation has passed in Florida, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota and Tennessee.
One-person, one-vote has worked just fine in South Carolina. And if candidates can’t win under this simple system, they don’t deserve to win. Ranked-choice voting is wrong for America, and I will continue to stand against it.
Finally
If you enjoy catching up on Statehouse news in this monthly column, I invite you to sign up for my regular Legislative Updates sent by email. Sign up at www.TaylorSCHouse.com.
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Publish date : 2024-08-28 00:00:00
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